Catching Up

He'll be furious, he'll demand that she return immediately; he'll suggest (he would never say it outright) that if she becomes exhausted and overwhelmed, if she falls ill again, she will have brought it on herself. And here, of course, is the dilemma: he's entirely right and horrbiyl wrong at the same time. She is better, she is safer, if she rests in Richmond; if she does not speak too much, write too much, feel too much;...and yet she is dying this way...better, really, to face the fin in the water than to live in hiding. - from The Hours , Michael Cunningham

The above is pretty much the description of what it was like to tell people I was going to graduate on time and take classes the second semester of my sophomore year. My report card had arrived over Christmas and was filled with "I"s for all the incompletes I had taken. My goal was to make all those up (18 credit hours) and still stay somewhat on track for my degrees, even though I only went part-time. Most people thought I was nuts. I mean, come on, I could take it easy, right? Take a semester off to catch up, maybe? No can do. There was no way I was being left behind my class if I could help it. So I moved home, became a commuter (and got Rosie, my beautiful first car, that President's Day...1995 Civic EX), and took French 210 (Intermediate French), American Foreign Policy and Brit Lit II (and choir for no credit). I wrote a paper on Milton's Paradise Lost and his portrayal of Satan while I watched the Super Bowl, wrote back due religion papers, took exams in Intro to Poli Sci and other classes while doing the new coursework. I was glad that Mark was a French major, because the syllabus alone was entirely in French, which kind of freaked me out. I had an OK reading comprehension but it wasn't that good!

I turned 20 that semester and had a solo in the Spring Choir Concert, which I enjoyed (it was a old-school musicals theme, so I'm well-suited for that stuff) and did manage to complete all my course work (go me!). I was very, very glad for the arrival of summer, even though I worked at Old Navy that year and worked crazy hours (if I never stock a denim wall again, that is A-OK with me).